Thursday, October 23, 2008

Illidan

Only Council and Illidan remained alive in Black Temple. Dominion was out to change that.

At first, it seemed like the universe itself was conspiring against me. First, it was Wednesday night. Wednesday is my usual night off, but I was able to get clearance to log on. Okay, first hurdle avoided.

The next was I was (and still am) sick. I hate to admit I was sick, but the 100.2 on the thermometer is sort of hard to argue against. I apologize in advance if this isn't too coherent. I'm still running a fever and I have taken my body weight in pharmaceuticals.

Undaunted I logged in. I knew we would get a shot at Illidan, and I didn't want to miss it.

We started out with Council. I was once again offhealing our Druid tank. I really wanted to see if I could hold the Rogue since I do so much more physical threat now, but this might have been our last foray into Black Temple. I simply decided it wasn't worth the time or effort to try to argue with my Raid Leader over it. Maybe next time.

Council was not the easy one shot everything else had been up to that point. From my limited vantage point way on the other side of the room with the Druid, I really couldn't see what was going on.

We had only killed Council once, and that had been at least a month ago. We also had a couple of people who had never even seen Council. I think it took two or three tries but we got it down.

We moved on up and began to prepare for Illidan. The firs problem we had was that Blizzard has done something with adding diminishing returns on Defense. What this meant was that my previous Max Fire Resist, Uncrittable gear set wasn't so uncrittable anymore.I made sure I was at maximum fire resistance, and then got as close to uncrittable as I could. What I found was pouring on more and more Defense rating barely moved my chance to not be Crit. So I turned to Resilience. In the end, I was only about 0.20% Crittable.

This situation really makes Druids very good fits for Resist fights because they can be uncrittable just via talents. Lucky for me, the Fire Resist Druid was not on. Also, the other Fire Tank (a Warrior) was having just as much trouble getting uncrittable. She decided to go the route of not worrying about the uncrittable and stacking Threat and Health.

Our very first attempt, we got both Flames down, and saw our first Phase 3 and Phase 4. We didn't spread out enough and eventually the fireballs got our healers and we wiped.

It took a couple more attempts before we got back to Phase 3. Unfortunately, most of our Phase 2 wipes were caused by me. Pretty much I made every mistake a Flame tank can make.

I got my Flame too far away from his twin.
I missed an Eye Beam.
I pulled my Flame too far away from his blade.
I turned my Flame to face the raid and got them Fire Breath'ed.

To their credit, my raid stayed with me, and continued to encourage me. I know I wasn't 100%, but I made sure no one else knew. I was staying in this raid. I felt like I was letting my team down.

We made it through Phase 2 and got into Phase 3. Then we missed a Phase 4 back to Phase 3 transition and lost our Main Tank, Kee. I was a little bit at a loss for what to do once we got out of Phase 2. I tried to stay far away from anyone, and throw what heals my meager Mana pool would support. I probably should have tried to 'DPS', but I didn't feel confident knowing exactly what melee had to do, so I hung back.

We pulled again, and got into Phase 4 again. Just as Phase 4 ended, we lost our Warlock tank. One of the other Warlocks (not in Shadow Resist gear), moved into position to try to tank the Demon. Then someone (maybe Fly?) realized we were close to 35%. DPS pushed hard and we were able to get to 30% before another Demon Phase. Suddenly we were all trapped in Shadow Prisons and a little more dialog between Illidan and Akama happened.We pushed hard once Illidan came up. We had survived with enough people to keep Kee up and continued to bang away at Illidan.

Then, finally, Illidan was defeated.I think the primary emotion I felt was relief, and a sense of closure. I think everything was muted by the fact I was sick.

Standing over Illidan's inert body, I thought to myself 'Well Illidan, I guess I WAS prepared!'

I logged off without saying much and went to bed. When I got up this morning there was a very nice message on my phone from my raid leader, thanking me for the job I did.

Congratulations, Honors. It's been very cheering for me to read your blog since I'm pretty sure my Paladin will never see the inside of Black Temple. Watching you do it lets me feel like I've been there. :-)